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It seems like Tennessee’s football team may have committed an unforced error by calling attention to a player who threw an interception during a recent practice by blurring them out to protect their identity. Most fans assumed that move was designed to protect one of the quarterbacks competing for the starting job, but the search for their identity took an interesting turn after some new information came to light.
Tennessee football fans had plenty of reasons to be optimistic after the team punched its ticket to the College Football Playoff during a season where the Volunteers posted a 10-3 record during Nico Iamaleava’s first year as their starting quarterback.
There wasn’t really any reason to think he wouldn’t be returning to Knoxville for his second. However, we were treated to a pretty stunning development in April when Iamaleava’s attempt to strong-arm Tennessee into a bigger NIL deal backfired when the program called his bluff and kicked him off the team before he ultimately found a new home at UCLA.
It’s still unclear who will be starting for the Vols when the upcoming season gets underway, as a few players are currently engaged in a QB battle at fall camp. Tennessee appeared to go out of its way to obscure the identity of one of those guys after they threw an interception during practice, but that may not have actually been the case.
The blurred-out Tennessee player may not have even been a QB
All signs point to Joey Aguilar being the frontrunner for the job, but the senior who transferred from Appalachian State does have some competition from redshirt freshman Jake Merklinger and true freshman George MacIntyre.
Each of them will have the chance to make their case at training camp as the rest of their teammates also showcase their skills—including Colton Hood, whose ability was highlighted in the clip of him snagging an interception at a practice over the weekend.
🏈🦅@Colton_Hood2023 | #GBO 🍊 pic.twitter.com/cBxpAjCKCW
— Tennessee Football (@Vol_Football) August 3, 2025
However, that pick was overshadowed by a detail that caught plenty of people’s attention: the decision to blur out the person who looked to be responsible for throwing the pass he nabbed.
The only real clue that could be used to determine their identity was the fact that they’re right-handed, which didn’t anything to narrow down the list of possible culprits when you consider all three of the aforementioned QBs fit the bill.
However, based on what J.D. PicKell of On3 shared after doing some digging, it sounds like there’s a very good chance the blurred-out player isn’t even listed as a QB on the depth chart.
The Cornell running back-turned-college football analyst countered the prevailing narrative by saying:
“I have it on extremely good authority that the player blurred out in that video is not the quarterback who threw the interception.
Rather, it is a player in a non-contact jersey due to injury—some are suspecting starting tight end Miles Kitselman—that Tennessee said, ‘You know what? We’re just gonna blur it out. We don’t want attenton drawn to our starting tight end being in a red jersey.'”
PicKell firmed up that argument by sharing a screenshot of an unblurred Kistelman wearing a non-contact jersey, so it seems like he was simply standing in front of whoever threw the pick (presumably one of the QBs competing for the starting gig) when the clip was captured.
As a result, it looks like the mystery is partially solved. We still don’t know who threw the interceptions, but at the end of the day, there’s no real reason to freak out about a single misstep at camp.